reintroduction

i bet you thought i wasn't coming back, right? wrong--i thought about you every day, almost.

i didn't mean to sound so cryptic in my last post before my sabbatical*. it just came out that way because i kept forgetting to hit the button that said "publish" in the edit field for the entry that would have allayed any fears for my well-being.

apologies/excuses finished, here follows my update.

last spring my teaching contract ended and i didn't renew it, so i moved back in with my family for the summer. it wasn't nearly the disaster i had expected, but it wasn't quite delightful. i worked forty hours per week in a local business, while looking for almost any job anywhere else and applying to grad school programs. meanwhile, i was supposed to help my family move into a new house. you probably won't be surprised to learn that i failed in every one of these endeavors.

now, many months later, i'm in the city and able to plan my life in (relative) peace**. what will follow, in this blog, will be a series of posts that exist in two different time periods, now and then. i hope i remember "then" well enough to do it justice.

*has a nicer ring than abandonment
**pun

out with the old, in with the older

as some of you might know, my favorite blog no longer exists. another good one has replaced it in my favorites list, though not in my heart. dan, i like you a lot, but tcb, i love you.

bringing messy back

hey everyone! i hope you're all ready for me to continue my scatter-brained posts. life has been crazy since may of last year: i've moved four times and have begun and finished a relationship.

don't worry that you're the only ones that i've neglected--i sent out my holiday cards on friday of last week. i wished the recipients a merry christmas, happy new year and happy epiphany and still managed to be late. i'll fill you in as much as possible.

an explanation, not an apology

hi. i know it's been a while. i'm not going to use the s-word (again), so here's an explanation for my sudden silence:

all that weird attention i was getting from the opposite sex earlier in the blog blew up. and it wasn't funny.

my computer's back!

hey, i'm back and so is my computer. i don't know where to start, because my life has been so eventful since my last post. so i'll do it another day. ciao.

the scot, part 3

the scot's name is officially mud.

following a conversation with a friend about my situation with the scot, i realized that the girl who told me about his alleged girlfriend wanted him for herself. therefore, she had no reason to do me any favors and was probably lying about his purported relationship. this realization and the scot's continued messages convinced me to give him another chance.

after almost three months of failed meeting attempts, the scot and i met for coffee (tea for me). not surprisingly, he barely recognized me and things were awkward. as it turns out, he is extremely soft-spoken and shy (though no less roguish), and so, had difficulty meeting my eyes for most of our time together. it was sort of endearing at the time, but now i think it had more to do with guilt than coy modesty.

near the end of our time together, i decided to get the girlfriend question out of the way. thus, i asked, very directly, "[jealous girl] told me your girlfriend was visiting this week. where does she live?" to which he responded, without pausing, "in [large city]."

update (5/4/07): what makes this story even more incredible is the fact that he was still sending me messages a week later.

the scot, part 2

i wrote this post on january 20:

tonight i went to a party at the apartment where the scot and i first met. from across the room i spotted one of the scot's friends, a girl who wanted to be more than his friend. the night the scot walked me home, she fought me for his attention, but failed. i didn't say anything to her at first because i didn't think she'd appreciate it, but then she asked me if i was the girl the scot walked home two months ago. i told her that i was, indeed, and asked how our mutual acquaintance was doing. i already kind of knew how he was doing because he hadn't stopped sending me messages for the past couple of months. we had tried many times to get together, without success.

the girl replied tactfully, but not without a bit of satisfaction, that he'd been extremely busy lately because his girlfriend had been visiting him. i made her repeat herself, then stared at her dumbly. my first thought was: "villanous knave!" the second was: "yeah, i should have seen it coming." despite all his sweet words, the scot made less of an effort to see me than he could have and tended to disappear for a week at a time.

not long after that conversation, i left the party and was struck for at least the twentieth time by the overabundance of cats prowling the streets. judging from the long, lusty meows that my roommate and i hear all night every night, i would guess that mating season has come a few months early. tonight, i found one of the chief meowers under a car and stamped my foot at him, hoping to scare him into silence, only to find that i had interrupted a cat orgy. no fewer than five cats emerged from the underside of the car, gathered their dignity and scattered in all directions.

even the cats in this city are promiscuous.